Unfortunately, there seems to be something of an impasse developing at the moment between the have's and the have not's where the developing countries in the agreement have refused to phase out HCFCs and methyl bromide unless there is more money forthcoming to help them with the no-doubt painful changeover to less harmful, but more expensive chemical products. But the industrial nations in the treaty (who have already agreed to completely banning these substances by 2030) have categorically stated that they have no further money to help fund the developing nations unless further promises to ban these substances were taken - and perhaps not even then. More than one country is seriously looking at the amount of money they are spending for other countries to be able to cut back and eventually cease the use of ozone depleting chemicals and the US, for one, is debating in congress whether or not to cut back on funding.

On the subject of HCFCs, it appears that because they are being used in replacement of CFCs they are fast becoming a similar, if somewhat less immediate, threat. The Vienna convention's scientific commitee reckons that if industrial nations were to ban HFCs as well as CFCs by 2000 just over four and a half per cent less ozone would be lost. But the industrial countries signed up for the treaty only agreed to limits for HCFCs that are in effect little different from the promises they initially made with 99.5 per cent of HCFCs being phased out by 2020 and completely banned by ten years later. Because of the disagreement over funding the developing nations have only agreed to freeze HCFC usage at levels used in 2015 in 2016 with a ban by 2040, but this will almost certainly mean an increase in HCFC usage as industrial nations dump obsolete and illegal HCFC-using technology onto the developing nations and the developing countries themselves up their usage so that, come the freeze in 2016, they will be at a comfortable level of supply.

Part of the problem is that there is no simple equation when it comes to the mixed bag of science that is trying to decipher ozone depletion and global warming. The two are without doubt linked, but the whole situation will only be truly visible once it has occurred - too late for mankind. Unfortunately, the current models for ozone depletion have been found to be underpredicting current levels of ozone loss by a factor of about two. What's worse, according to some gloomy scientists, is the probability that ozone depletion will actually accelerate in a snowball effect scenario caused by the amount of ozone that has already been lost. The title 'snowball effect' is ironically accurate as the reason for the accelerated depletion could be caused by the stratosphere cooling down and being more prone to form ice crystals (ozone absorbs ultraviolet rays from the sun warming up the stratposhere) which are known to increase ozone depletion as observed in the 'ozone hole' over Antartica.

Worse still was the news that was skimmed over which was the fact that the funding for university laboratories through the Department of Education and Employment has been reduced by about a third from 1995's budget of £350 million. The £107 million cut means that labs won't be able to completely revamp their equipment, some of which is dangerously old.

In 1989, the University of Manchester carried out a survey of university laboratories and found that over a third of laboratory equipment was over ten years old then and that 80 per cent of departments didn't have the equipment they needed for their research programs. Sometime early this year the university will publish its findings in a follow-up to the original report, but there can be little hope of any improvement.